Web exclusive: Coral reefs – look closer

The reef is full of life, none more obvious than sharks, whales and turtles but look closer and there’s a hidden world. In fact for every vertebrate you see on the reef, there are twenty times more invertebrates that are not always so easy to spot.

Even a single coral head can be home to hundreds of invertebrates: barnacles, nudibranchs, crabs, shrimps. Watch out for the gall crab, entombed within the coral with only the tiniest of openings through which it can feed and mate.